


and teeth to the loves and the curses

by seditonem



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 04:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seditonem/pseuds/seditonem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I only date you ‘cause you’re blond,” Ray winks. “And ‘cause you’ve got a great rack.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	and teeth to the loves and the curses

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: language, vague sexy-times.  
> disclaimer: fictional, non-profit.

Brad doesn’t hate Iraq. In it’s own way, it’s beautiful. Not like the open ocean, like the sharp breeze, like a flat lawn of perfect green grass – no. It’s subtle, almost invisible. You have to look for it, be willing to dig through the layers of fuck-ups and the bullets to finally find the spots where you stop and think, _Well. This is alright._

In that respect, Iraq is a lot like Ray Person. 

/

Brad finds Ray sleeping in the Humvee with his chin on his knees, all curled up like he doesn’t spew shit all the life-long day. It’s dark and Brad’s pretty sure almost no one else is awake except the guys who don’t have much choice but to keep their eyes open. His own eyes feel like they have grit in them. They feel like they’re itching to close. Brad waits for a minute, watches Ray with his knees against his chin and his front teeth digging into his bottom lip slightly, and wonders idly if Ray will have pins and needles later. 

“Ray.” Ray snuffles, paws at his own nose, and looks up at Brad. 

“You know you like, blot out all the light when you stand in the doorway like that.” 

“Because there was so much illumination to begin with,” Brad replies, coolly. “Go get in a grave, Ray.”

“Ah, fuck, numb leg,” Ray mutters. “This sucks, homes, this really fucking sucks.” 

Thankfully he’s too tired to say anything more. Brad sits down in the car seat when Ray’s gone, feeling the phantom heat of him left behind, and waits there till it begins to get light again. 

/

_You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off you -_

Brad puts a loaf of whole-wheat bread and bypasses the crusts-cut-off, no-fibre-content bowel-destroying monstrosity that he knows Ray would put in the basket instead.

State-side is like an airport terminal. Everything’s a little bit too clean, too shiny, and Brad feels like at any moment he’ll be called to board a plane somewhere else. 

/

“Brad.” A beat. “Brad. Brad. Braaaaaaaad.” 

“Shut up, Ray.”

“Did I ever tell you about that time Trombley tried to talk about his feelings for his wife?” 

“Shut up, Ray.”

/ 

Ray has a sloppy kissing technique. Brad tells him that the first time they kiss. 

Actually, it’s less of a kiss and more of a full-frontal mouth attack, like Ray was driving right into Brad via the nearest orifice, no prisoners taken, no holds barred. 

Brad’s all for eagerness, but – “Person. Be advised, you’re making me feel like my mouth is in some sort of broken washing machine.” 

“You will not be saying that, Brad, when my mouth is on your dick,” Ray tells him, seriously, his breath against Brad’s jawline. The fact that he can’t see Ray’s eyes when he says that makes him angry, makes him push Ray onto the bed and crawl between his thighs and pull them so close together their sweat bleeds together. Ray’s ankles cross behind Brad’s back, and even though he’s murmuring _Stop making me look like the fucking girl here_ into Brad’s kiss, his technique does improve, on the whole. Brad frames his face with his hands, feeling the wiry softness of Ray’s short hair at the base of his neck, the rough patches of skin beneath his jaw that mark the spots where material chafed him. 

Ray’s body is a map of where he’s been, who he’s seen, what he’s done. There, the tattoos from years ago, from perhaps another lifetime. Here, the burn from the espresso explosion. Over there, the blister from the woefully inadequate shoes he wore when he walked to Brad’s house. 

Brad joins the points of the map up together with his fingertips, triangulates coordinates. Always comes back to Ray’s mouth, to plunder for kisses, to hold and to savour. 

/ 

“C’mon, _Brad_ ,” Ray says, low-pitched and sleep roughened, “don’t you trust your old buddy Ray-Ray anymore?” 

“Not with a razor near my windpipe,” Brad says, idly, not looking at Ray as he shaves carefully down the side of his face and dips the razor into hot water, rinsing lather off it. The mirror steams up a little again from the heat of Ray’s shower, and Ray wipes it away with a towel, making faces at Brad. And it’s not like this is the first shave Brad has had since returning – this is the nth, the thousandth, the uncountable – so Brad gives in, eventually, gives Ray the fought-for ground. Ray cackles triumphantly, then pushes himself up onto the bathroom counter, pulling Brad by the elastic of his briefs to stand between Ray’s legs. 

He shaves Brad very carefully, not looking anywhere but where the blade is going, and after each stroke he washes the blade, just like Brad does it. He works smoothly, methodically, and Brad almost dozes off again, leaning into the warmth of Ray’s post-shower body, the pleasant damp of the towel that’s slipping off his narrow hips. 

Ray’s fingertips on his cheeks wake him up a little. “All done,” Ray says, quietly. This is not the Ray Brad is used to. This is a Ray who is keeping silent, and that worries Brad a little, makes him wonder what’s up. Brad can’t communicate with Ray the way he can with Nate – with looks and nods – and he wouldn’t have it any other way. With Ray, things are spelt out, things are said, things are mapped out with words so that they can be understood. So there can be no fuck-ups. 

“Ray?” 

“Your eyelashes are blond,” Ray comments. “You Aryan motherfucker, blond from tip to toe. 

“What a shame that would be, if I were not a natural blond,” Brad sighs, pokerfaced. 

“I only date you ‘cause you’re blond,” Ray winks. “And ‘cause you’ve got a great rack.” He moulds his hands over Brad’s imaginary breasts, cups them and pushes them together. Brad rolls his eyes, moves back a little, dragging Ray’s towel with him. 

“So you would call this dating, then,” Brad says, testing it out on his tongue. ‘Dating’ sounds like a word reserved for middle-class women in advertising who wear high heels and are on their phones all the time. ‘Dating’ doesn’t sound like something Ray Person would do, not to mention Brad Colbert.

“I would call this good old fashioned fucking, in our own personal and glorious homage to the Greeks,” Ray replies, deadpan. “We’re makin’ them proud, homes, real proud that their legacy of ass-fucking lives on today.” 

“Hmm,” Brad says, against Ray’s mouth. “Alright, then.”

/

“Brad,” Nate nods, as he comes to stand next to Brad. They both survey the horizon. 

After moment, Nate clears his throat. “What, exactly, is Person doing?” he asks, eventually.

“Ray Person is one of the mysteries of the universe, LT, one that perhaps we will only fully comprehend in death. The level of his retardese, sir, is one that ordinary human beings like myself and you cannot begin to understand. Years of living in a trailer park with a clusterfuck of social problems and an almost inexhaustible appetite for narcotics has resulted in the government unapproved mutant we see before us, whose only purpose in life is to fuck his own cousin and make his whisky-tango family somewhat proud by not getting fucked over in this end of the earth,” Brad replies, slowly.

Nate blinks. 

“I think that’s the most I’ve heard you talk about anyone, ever,” he says after another moment of silence. 

“That’s why they call it true love, dawg!” Poke says, as he passes by. 

Brad spits and continues watching the horizon. 

/

Ray sleeps with one hand against Brad’s heart and his mouth to Brad’s clavicle. 

Brad sleeps more often than he used to. 


End file.
